Glow in the Dark Roads: Distraction or Improvement?

A lot of really bad vehicular accidents happen at nighttime, and most of them are caused by low visibility. When drivers can’t see properly, they can veer off the road or collide with incoming traffic. Headlights, sobriety, and alertness are identified as the primary ways to prevent such catastrophes from happening, and there will soon be an additional feature in the form of glow in the dark roads.

Aside from headlights, we have reflectors and street lights to provide better visibility on the roads, but they aren’t always effective in providing good driving conditions when additional factors (e.g. fog) hamper your driving. More options and solutions need to be on the table, and glow in the dark roads are perhaps that next step towards maximizing nighttime driving safety.

There are glow in the dark highways now being implemented in the Netherlands a country known for its unorthodox approach to governance and regulation in many things that other nations would deem illegal and even taboo. Dutch firms Studio Roosegaarde and Hejmans Infrastructure have come up with the Smart Highway that incorporate various concepts like color-changing road paint, luminescent lane markers, interactive street lights, and so on. These may seem like ridiculous ideas at first, but they are practical solutions on paper because their cost-effectiveness.

In the interest of fairness, there are a few concerns regarding roads that glow in the dark. Some motorists and regulators feel that it may be more of an distraction than an assistance. Furthermore, despite the presence of such illuminating roads, you’d still have to turn on your headlights to be able to see incoming vehicles. However, the advantage in this is that you’ll always have a clear perception on where the road is heading. Cool, right? Right. That these types of roads will remain highly effective in spite of heavy rain and thick fog make it all the more cool.

Here’s to hoping that the implementation of glow in the dark roads can truly improve driving in low light conditions, making ugly, unwanted, and unnecessary accidents a thing of the past.